Isometric illustration of a small server next to analytics panels whose traffic chart and bars finally start to rise

If you ask any software engineer what their favorite phase of a project is, nine out of ten will say: building it. Architecting the backend, tuning database queries, polishing the UI with neat animations, and setting up automated deployments with Docker or Coolify. It’s familiar, controllable, and deeply rewarding.

Then comes launch day. You push to production, run your health checks, and… silence.

The harsh reality of being a solo developer is that building the product is often the easiest 20% of the journey. The remaining 80% is distribution. And let’s be honest: marketing web projects is tough, exhausting, and often counter-intuitive for technical minds.

Here are my honest reflections on marketing projects like Enkihost.com, Enkimail.com, Jombo.fi, and Truek.xyz, what channels I currently rely on, and a dilemma I’ve been debating recently.

My Core Channels: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit (in English)

Since my projects cater to a global developer and digital community, all my marketing and outreach happens in English across three primary platforms:

1. Twitter / X: The #BuildInPublic Bubble

Twitter is fantastic for networking and finding fellow indie hackers. Sharing small progress wins, architecture screenshots, and deployment tips creates quick engagement.

However, it also comes with a caveat: it can easily become an echo chamber. Oftentimes on Twitter, developers are selling ideas to other developers who are also trying to sell their own ideas. While it’s unmatched for technical camaraderie and early peer feedback, converting impressions into paying customers or dedicated daily active users takes serious patience and continuous output.

2. LinkedIn: The Practical Professional Crowd

LinkedIn is often dismissed by developers as overly formal or corporate, but it’s surprisingly effective. When posting about infrastructure decisions, email deliverability challenges, or real architectural trade-offs, people actually pay attention.

The reach on LinkedIn is organic and tends to reach decision-makers, freelancers, and agency leads who have real budgets and real hosting or tool requirements.

3. Reddit: Brutal Honesty and High Conversion

Reddit is perhaps the highest-stakes channel:

  • The downside: Subreddits have zero tolerance for spam or unsolicited self-promotion. If you drop a link without context, you will be downvoted or banned within minutes.
  • The upside: If you genuinely share your journey, open-source your findings, or ask for critical feedback in places like r/SideProject, r/webdev, or r/ruby, you get the most unfiltered, valuable product critique on the internet. A single well-received post can bring hundreds of targeted visitors.

The Dilemma: Are SaaS Directories Worth It?

Over the past couple of years, the web has been flooded with hundreds of “AI Tool Directories”, “SaaS Launchpads”, and curated startup lists. My inbox and feeds are constantly filled with offers promising: “Submit your project to 150+ directories to boost your SEO and get 1,000 visitors overnight!”

When you inspect most of these directories closely, your developer radar immediately triggers red flags:

  • Many look cloned, outdated, or built over a weekend purely for ad arbitrage.
  • Domain Authority numbers are often inflated, and genuine organic user traffic looks almost non-existent.
  • A lot of them demand $29 to $99 for “expedited listing” on directories nobody actively browses.

Naturally, my immediate instinct has always been skepticism: Why waste time or money on directories that don’t look reliable?

But… Should I Test Them Anyway?

Here is the other side of the coin that I’ve been reconsidering:

  1. Long-tail SEO & Backlinks: Even if individual human traffic is low, having a diverse backlink profile across recognized indexers can occasionally provide a modest foundational boost to domain authority for brand-new domains.
  2. Niche Discovery: While general spammy directories are useless, there are curated, quality lists (like GitHub awesome-lists, specialized open-source repositories, and niche developer catalogs) where people genuinely discover new utilities.
  3. The Cost of Inaction: As a solo founder, testing a hypothesis is usually better than dismissing it based on gut feeling alone. If spending an afternoon submitting to a curated batch of free or low-friction directories brings even 5 real, engaged users, the experiment might pay for itself in feedback.

The Plan Moving Forward

Rather than blindly submitting to every directory on the internet or ignoring them altogether, my approach will be pragmatic:

  • Filter aggressively: Avoid automated “blast to 200 sites” services. Only consider directories with verified traffic and clean UI/UX that align with developer tools or digital products.
  • Double down on value-first content: Marketing isn’t just posting links; it’s solving problems in public. Writing in-depth guides (like integrating payment gateways or setting up transactional email systems) remains the most reliable organic growth engine.
  • Measure everything: If I test a batch of directory submissions, I will track referral UTM tags closely to see whether any real session duration or sign-ups materialize.

Marketing as an engineer is uncomfortable because code either compiles or throws an error, whereas marketing depends on human psychology, timing, and distribution algorithms. But learning to market is just another skill to debug and iterate on.

If you’re a builder struggling with distribution, you’re not alone. Let’s keep shipping—and keep sharing.